Singing Girl from Far Away
by Queen of Spatulas
Summary: Yumi, my Japanese name (hence me) on another fic about being in love. Kenshin sees his past again and leaves. Based upon the first 15 episodes of the series on Toonami. Kenshin vows to keep her from killing? Excuse me?


Rurouni Kenshin is property of whoever owns Kenshin, but Shinko, Yumi, and all her attributes belong to me. The group of Seph, Seto, Ryou, and Gene belongs to me too! NO THEY ARE NOT THE ONES FROM SHINKO'S SERIES OF BISHONEN STORIES!!  
  
Rurouni Kenshin Mini Fan Series:  
  
The Singing Girl from Far Away  
  
Chapter One:  
  
Given Hearts  
  
In the middle of Tokyo sat the restaurant, Akabeko, where many people came together to eat beef stew. Times were changing, which was exactly why a young woman sat in there alone. She ate the stew slowly and looked as if she didn't enjoy it.   
  
Across from her sat a group from the Kamiya Dojo, Kaoru, Yahiko, Sanosuke, and Kenshin, plus the Doctors Megumi and Gensai and the little girls, Aiane and Suzume.   
  
"Uncle Ken, wanna try?" asked the little Aiane to Kenshin.  
  
Kenshin smiled. "Sure. Give it here." He took a bite, and though it was too salty since the girls messed with it a bit, he gave them the nod. "You put a touch on the beef."  
  
  
  
"Thank you, Uncle Ken!" Aiane laughed.  
  
Suzume did the same. "Thank you!"  
  
Yahiko and Sano started to fight with each other as always, but Kaoru looked up to see the girl by herself. "Hey, look over there!" the assistant master of the Kamiya Kasshin Dojo said, pointing to the girl who seemed to be crying. "She's all alone…"  
  
Kenshin looked up and noticed her as well. "Saddened by a past occurrence, that she is." He noticed how slow she ate, and watched her until she looked up with tears in her eyes.  
  
"Damn," she said with a clearly opposing voice. "I thought that I could go one place without having to fight someone, but I guess not." Then she looked into Kenshin's eyes, clear purple eyes with a past behind them. Somewhat like her own.  
  
'As a daughter of a samurai,' she thought, 'I had no other way to survive than by learning to fight, but I don't know what to say about me now. I thought that I had a way… to live without trouble, but the past always comes back! Always!' The girl stood and pointed at Kenshin.   
  
"FIGHT ME!! You HAS BEEN!" she screamed loudly at Kenshin. "I won't tolerate this!"   
  
"YUMI!!" a man screamed with worry.  
  
"That's got to be Little Yumi!" another said with passion.   
  
Four men gathered around her in the booth she was sitting at, but Kenshin was worried more about the girl's now harsh and unforgiving expression. All of them were in nice kimonos, but Yumi was the most beautiful in the group.   
  
"I can't believe you four." Yumi said discornfully. "I don't want to talk to that man… he's not going to like me at all, so leave me alone!"  
  
"We're family, Yumi!" said one with short brown hair in a distorted mess. "We won't let you be alone, because you're part of us."  
  
Yumi disagreed. "My family was killed by the new imperialists! My father was a samurai, a great man… and my mother was a beautiful singer. They made their way and by the time that I was seventeen, life took a turn for the worst with the revolution…" She cried, throwing the plate of beef stew and it's contents at the nearest wall.   
  
The man with long silver hair nodded. "We know that you are hurt inside. That's why you…"  
  
Yumi pulled out her sword and cut the table before her with the twist of her wrist. "Doing what my mother did for a living is pure weakness, you see? I am more qualified to kill than anything else, like whoever this… Batosai was… who killed them in Kyoto!"  
  
Kenshin heard every word and felt as if he should apologize, but he did not. He did not fear this girl by any means, but her heart could be what exactly made her like a ravenous dog. Instead he stood and left the restaurant with nothing said, which worried Kaoru and the others.  
  
The men talked to Yumi until she felt better and they left the Akabeko after paying their bill. They walked to a carriage, where they were happily engaged in conversation, as if Yumi was just another girl and the men were her older brothers.   
  
When night fell upon Tokyo, Yumi walked alone in the dark streets. The place was nice in the dark where the river flowed gently by. In the river was a reflection where she could look into her own eyes, seeing the flashbacks of her family as if they were happening once again. 'Mother,' Yumi thought with tears in her eyes, 'Father, things were so happy before the revolution, everything fit into place, and so did we… prestigious in every way…'   
  
"The Way of the Sword, the two paths one can take…" she said to herself aloud. "To kill or to protect… which one belongs to the Samurai? Which one belongs to me? To protect one, you kill many… to kill is not to protect, but to destroy…" The young woman fell upon her back and thought about it while looking at the stars until she fell asleep.  
  
In the shadows lurked a very stealthy man dressed in black. "Hmm, so this is the one that he wanted? The beauty of a million kills? If there were a female Batosai, this would be the girl… I'm not so sure what the Shinsengumi want, but if it's anything with this girl and her voice, they'll have to pay me good money…" He tried to reach around the woman's waist when a sword was thrust into his back.  
  
"Mess with Little Yumi, and you'll pay." Said one of the men that happened to be one of the men she was with before. "She's going to the Shinsengumi tonight!" The others laughed harshly along with him while picking her up.   
  
Kenshin, while in his room, thought about the girl he had seen and her words. The Batosai killed her father? Was her father a man with the Shinsengumi? Who knew what was going on, but he heard something in his heart call out to tell him that someone was being hurt right then.  
  
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?!" Yumi screamed while trying to get away. "NO!! I won't sing, no I won't sing for those evil people who made my father fight a man he couldn't survive against!"   
  
The men she was surrounded by grabbed her in all the places that they shouldn't have. She cried and screamed out in the middle of the city, but no one came to her aid. "I'm a samurai's daughter, how dare you!!! MY FATHER WOULD HAVE KILLED YOU BY NOW!" Her voice tired of screaming and her heart heavy with fear, she could do nothing as her kimono came flying off.   
  
"That's enough." Came a still and serious voice. "Let the girl walk away and you will only have to deal with the police."  
  
Yumi fell to the ground onto her clothes. "How could someone stand up to these people?" she asked herself. "Who would save them for me? Those men were imposters for the ones I cared for… Seph, Ryou, Seto, and Gene Kinomoto… brothers who adopted me into their family… but where are they?"  
  
Kenshin heard those words she said and nodded. "So you've been attempting to rape women who lose their families?" he asked. "That's horrible… that people would do such a thing." He charged at all four of them, knocking them out as the police came from behind Kenshin.  
  
"I can't believe it…" Yumi said, trying to put on her kimono before Kenshin or anyone else had a look. "Those men were imposters… the brothers that I cared for… that adopted me… are gone… HOW DARE THEY PLAY WITH MY MIND!!" She retrieved her sword and ran to kill the ones that Kenshin knocked out.  
  
"NO!" Kenshin stopped her from going any further. "You can't kill them. Let them decide their own fate, Miss Yumi." He held on to her hands and grasped them tightly, but Yumi looked at those who hurt her previously. Kenshin watched her start to cry in frustration.  
  
"My father would have killed them." Yumi said to him. "He was the noblest man I ever knew, and he would never allow such torture to befall upon anyone, and especially not me…" She cried into Kenshin's chest, but Kenshin felt slightly embarrassed about the whole thing. Yumi's arms wrapped around him in a lovingly manner.   
  
Kenshin didn't understand too well, but he did figure out that she was sad and frustrated at him, the world, and herself. He didn't know what exactly to do, except that when she fell asleep in his arms then, he carried her to the Dojo and put her in his room, in his futon and he slept against the wall like he did for so many years in the past.  
  
Later, Kenshin woke up to the sound of singing. Yumi was not in the futon, but when Kenshin walked outside into the yard that held the bathhouse, he found Yumi in the center, singing while looking at the full moon. The music was beautiful as she was, and this made Kenshin wonder about why Yumi said that living like her mother was weak.   
  
Yumi made it seem as if the wind was just a song when she sang, but the song was of horrible and death related insight. Though it was a great song, her sorrow weighed it down until it was so heavy it could not fly upon the wind, like many other songs have.   
  
Suddenly, Yumi stopped singing and sighed, talking to herself aloud. "That man… who saved me… from those… evil ones… is so nice. I wonder if he is married or something? I would like to have someone who has strength, but knows exactly how and when to use it too… not like those has been samurai that used their power…" Yumi threw her hands into the air and breathed in the clean oxygen. "…And who will listen to anything I have to say… I believe that I know him somehow…" she sighed and laughed to herself. "Whatever his name is, I believe that I have found what took me forever to find."  
  
Kenshin went back in his room and acted as if he was asleep as Yumi came into the room and sat down on the Tatami mats. She noticed that Kenshin didn't sleep in his futon, like he expected her to stay in his bed! Yumi took the covers from the futon and wrapped them around Kenshin and she tucked herself in the corner along with her sword.  
  
"If love fails me," Yumi whispered as she hugged her sword close to her, "then I'm going to have to move on and continue my search for the legendary Batosai… so I may one day avenge my father's death…"   
  
Kenshin opened his eyes and was flattered by her kindness, but Yumi was shaking in the cold, and if he didn't do something, she would get sick. He walked to her and placed the blanket on her, sitting right next to her. "Love may not fail you, as you may think." He said in a whisper. "No one understands me or my past either, but we must move on, that we must. Yumi, you've got talent… you could use that… I'm sure that you're father would feel better in the afterlife if you were to sing like that. I am sure, that I most certainly am!"  
  
The woman pulled herself in to get warmer. "Tomoe… that Tomoe…"  
  
Kenshin's eyes opened with shock in them. "Tomoe?" he asked. "I haven't heard that name in such a long time… Tomoe…" He didn't want to think about her, but Yumi did look a lot like her, and yet Yumi's spirit was different, a tune would play in Kenshin's memory, every time Tomoe came to it. Times had grown into stranger and stranger realities, and the fact he was living in this dojo wasn't like him at all.  
  
In the morning, Yumi woke up to the smell of fresh fish being cooked. She looked around to see no one was there, but she knew that someone was preparing a dish she would be interested in.   
  
The door opened and Yahiko smiled at Yumi. "Good morning, Yumi." He said with a sword in his hand. "I wanted to ask you something."  
  
"Go for it, Little Yahiko." Yumi said, sitting up and leaning on the wall with her hair in a mess.   
  
Yahiko's face became redder than a tomato. "DON'T CALL ME LITTLE!" he screamed at her, but she just laughed. "My question is about your father." He said after he settled down and sat beside her. "Mine was a samurai too."  
  
Yumi looked at Yahiko again, but this time deeper into his eyes. "I can tell that you've got great pride, and you're going to grow up into a strong man with his heart in the right places." She said with sincerity. Her smile widened with Yahiko's own. "My father was honest… we lived in Osaka."  
  
"Osaka?" Yahiko asked as if he was amazed. "That was a beautiful place, wasn't it?"  
  
Yumi's head fell and she looked at her sword. "Yes, the most beautiful place of places. We had a nice house and a garden, but the samurai was not being used as much and we couldn't afford to keep it for too long." Her smile vanished from her face as she tried to hold back what seemed to be imminent tears. "So my mother sang for a living and that kept us eating while we made a journey to the capital, Kyoto. Before we went, we had to buy clothing from a vender, and my father bought what looked to be a nice robe, but it was really a Shinsengumi uniform. There in Kyoto stood a man who looked only a couple years older than I slaying men right in front of me… the first time I ever saw a man killed was then… and the man started to run at my father because of the uniform!! The Batosai killed him! My mother was wounded protecting me from a blow and I managed to get her out just to hear her voice sing one more time… a tune I've known for a long, long time."  
  
Yahiko shook his head in disbelief. "No way, that's just plain horrible…"  
  
"It's the honest truth…" Yumi stood and walked out to the place she had sung before where Kenshin was doing laundry. She noticed his ponytail and fear went down her spine when she realized where she saw the same colored hair and style before. "Kenshin?" she asked aloud.  
  
Kenshin looked behind him to see Yumi. "Ah, Miss Yumi, you're awake! There's some fish for you in the…"  
  
"You're the…" Yumi looked at Kenshin in horror. "You're the BATOSAI!" She drew her sword in means to kill him suddenly. "Die for the crimes you have committed!"  
  
Kenshin threw up his reversed blade sword to guard himself. "Miss Yumi, I threw away that life a long time ago. I will never kill… ever…"  
  
Yumi pressed hard against Kenshin's force. "You killed the only people I ever had! My father wasn't even a member of the Shinsengumi that attacked Kyoto. That was… just new clothes he had bought because there was nothing else!!" Her heart pounded angrily, as if she could not do anything about what her body was doing. "WHY?!"  
  
The Batosai shook his head. "I had to. Please, you don't have to forgive me for what I have done, but what is in the past is in the past. If you were to kill me, then it would not bring back those you love." He watched Yumi become teary eyed.  
  
Yumi threw her sword down onto the ground. "I couldn't kill you if I tried. Kenshin… I've… fallen in love with… you… How dare I do something like this?"   
  
Kaoru came out of the dojo and looked at Kenshin trying to console Yumi with words kinder than what he would usually say to her. "Yumi? Kenshin?"  
  
Yumi shook her head and started to leave after picking up her sword from the dirty ground. "I can't believe what I've done. I'm a bother to you, aren't I?" she asked of them as she turned to leave alone.  
  
"Wait!!" Kenshin said behind her. "Don't go!"  
  
"I must…" Yumi walked out of the dojo then, feeling the wind blow harder than it had for a while. "…because there is nothing else for me where I was. My father's killer and the one that I want to love?" she was so frustrated that it hurt to think about the situation, given the fact that Kenshin may have had someone else in mind, someone who he loved.  
  
Kaoru was confused on what was going on in her own home. "What? Kenshin? What happened here?"   
  
"Miss Yumi has a heart for me, it seems." Kenshin whispered to himself. "I don't believe that this is meant to change me, but I have no choice…" He stood up and looked at Kaoru. "Miss Kaoru, please, I must go. Thank you for all you've done, but this just might be something that comes to haunt us all later."  
  
"Let us help you." Yahiko said while training. "We can do anything to help you, Kenshin!"  
  
The Batosai refused their assistance. "Sorry, but this is not for you to toy with. I must confront this on my own, but Miss Yumi needs help…"  
  
Kaoru felt something develop in her heart. "Kenshin, you have to come back!"  
  
"I will do what ever is needed of me, that I will." Kenshin left to deal with his demons of the past as his friends, angry at him and Yumi, watched him go. It seemed as if nothing would help the situation now, except Kenshin's words to Yumi. 


End file.
